The other day i was playing some test tones...i have a freq generator,and i was going down gradually to see which was loudest so eventually i reached 5hz and stupid me wasnt hearing anything....i know u cant hear 5 hz...but i thought u would hear a little noise so i turned up the vol.and i turned around.....goddamn,it looked like an exorcist movie,my sub looked like it was about to pop out and smack me.I turned it down right away and my sub played fine after but can test tones damge ur sub
lol wtf, just be carefull init. you should feel, the 5 hz. but also you should have an "osciliscope" i think das how u spell it. any way u need to connect that as well to ur sub so that you make sure that you dont clip any think. that will protech ur sub and everything should be fine
yes, test tones are save...IF you have your gains set correctly. but IMO clipped test tones will damage a sub faster than clipped music.
think of it like this, w/ normal music you get peaks in the wave-form from time to time (loud parts of the song)...if these peaks in the wave force the amp to clip (aka, gains too high), the amp only clips at that point.
now think about a tone...its a steady wave form (sine-wave), if you have your volume and gain are set to the same level as you did w/ the music that clipped at the peaks in the music...this tone (0dB reference) will clip at EVERY peak in the cycle. thus you have more clipping that if you were playing music.
to make matters worse...as the # of cycles per second decreases, the peak is slower to decrease. so in other words, your amp continues to put out a clipped signal for a longer period of time. this will cause more distortion and heat. the amp and VC will both heat up and eventually cause damage.
...clipping doent kill VC's, heat kills VC. BUT a clipped signal means more heat, so clipping can and will increase the probiblity of a VC burning...
which is exactely what happened to my subs, from audiobahn subs to door stops, in one week. lol i had my setup up planned well , when i ordered by one get one free subs audiobahn 15's 650rms (way overated, which i realised now) i got a MTX1501d it puts out 1070RMS 2 ohms at 12v and first one of my subs started smoking, lol. deffently a burnt vc. and i cut it open to investigate and found dat bascially the voice coil had detatched form the former part it raps around, and was like jamed in between near the top part and half of it was completely off it on the top side. then two days later the other one went. but it just stoped moving but no smoke. and i havent cut that one up imtrying to get some money back or something at least from audiobahn, as the gain was set just under a 1/4 of the way up. jst not very happy. im now looking for the real quality stuff now. RE, MTX, eclipse
heh heh i did an experiment with some subs...well speakers really,and with 1 i held down the cone and then ripped off the dustcap and got my a$s burned...the former had gotten so hot even the magnet was warm.
